Picturing Dinosaurs

Welcome to the latest edition of “Picturing...” as we celebrate the art of dinosaurs and creatures in the spirit of dinosaurs. It’s no secret among my friends that I am obsessed with Natural History museums and have far more dinosaur toys in my office than any forty-three year old should admit to having. That said, I’m no expert on dinosaurs, not even in the way that most seven-year-olds can rattle off the names of their favorites. But I love these museums as art installations in themselves, telling nearly unbelievable stories that actually happened. The images included here were chosen because I love them as artwork and I have indulged in, more than a little, the fantastic stories that have been inspired by these creatures. Please enjoy this mix of science and art, fantasy (intentional or otherwise), old theories and new…

John Gurche, one of today’s preeminent paleoartists, playing with scale:

A city street from James Gurney’s Dinotopia series. Gurney is equally at home with scientific illustration and fantasy. It’s the mix of authenticity and imagination that make the Dinotopia books such a delight.

I had not heard of Douglas Henderson before I started this collection. Clearly he is well known in paleoart circles, and with good reason. He lends a real sense of narrative and mood to scientific illustration.

I love the light shining through the water, here. You can just imagine the terror you’d feel seeing such a creature revealed in the waves.

Another Henderson plesiosaur (with one crazy-scary shark) from The Oceans of Kansas.

Mark Teague teamed up with writer Jane Yolen to create a series of one of my favorite children’s books, the “How do Dinosaurs...?” series. They teach kids how to behave well, while first delighting in all kinds of terrible behavior. I also love that, inexplicably, all the dinosaurs have human parents.

I should have remembered to add him to the list, but Twitter is just sooo short. A great artist who actually works for the AMNH is Mick Ellison. He gets to go into the field and see these great fossils first hand and work with the folks digging them out of the dirt. Here is an early feathered sinornithosaurus that he drew.

...OK. So, the question mark in my name is a c with an acute accent; Burian's is an e with an upside-down ^ on it; when I write HTML entities instead of copying & pasting the letters from the character map, they disappear in preview; and I'll never start a blog on tor.com.

I knew the plesiosaurs and others weren’t real dinosuars but I had thought “dinosaurs and creatures in the spirit of dinosaurs” in my intro would cover it. I’ve since learned that my laymans nonchalance is a bit more of an issue than I had realized. To do it over, I should have called it Picturing Dinosaurs and Other Ancients.

Awesome post Irene! A few weeks ago I was thinking it would be nice to have a comprehensive list of dinosaur artists. I vividly remember the first time I went to a dinosaur museum when I was 5 years old. I was in love.

Thank you for including my work in your gallery of dinosaur artwork. Very good company to be in! Of course, I know and have had the pleasure of exhibiting with quite a few of these artists over the years. Thanks again!

Great post, some of my absolute favorite artists are here (*cough* Guerney *cough*). However there is an additional artist definitely worth mentioning:

Stephen R. Bissetteis a wonderful comic artist who, back in the day, worked on Swamp thing with Alan Moore. He is a long-time dino fanatic who researched, wrote, and illustrated his own series called Tyrant in the early 1990s.

Thanks for collecting these excellent examples of dino art. My favorite - Charles R. Knight and Gregory Paul. Charles Knight designed the reptile house and the National Zoo in Washington, DC. Wonderful mosiacs. The columns at the entrance rise up from the shells of giant tortoises. A grand surprise when first visted years ago.